Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts

Beet salad with prunes, walnuts and onions dressed up with mayo or sour cream or both is one of the traditional salads of ukrainian cuisine.

Also, this dish is one of the not many dishes which uses beets as a main ingredient.

It is very important to use sweet and rich red color beets for this salad. So, when buying beets scratch their skin with a nail: dark red pulp under skin is a sign of good beet, not pink and not white.

It is also important to use good quality walnuts; taste before you buy them: old walnuts can be bitter and using such will make you salad taste bitter as well.

Ingredients:

3 fresh beets (about 1.5lb)

8 dry prunes (less or more to taste)

Several walnuts

1 shallot onion or 1/2 of small onion

Mayonnaise, about 2 tablespoons

Salt to taste

How to prepare, step-by-step:

Prepare ingredients: amount of prunes and walnuts can be varied to taste, as well as you can use mayonnaise mix with sour cream instead of just mayonnaise if you like; the rest really depends on beets: they should be fresh, sweet, red and tasty to make this salad good: Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 1

Boil beets skin on as for salad and let them cool down till room temperature (you can actually boil them in advance to save some time): Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 2

Once beets are ready and cooled down, put prunes to a bowl and fill bowl with boiling water; set bowl aside until prunes are softened a bit (about 8-10 mins), then drain water. If you use not-pitted prunes, keep them in the water longer (that will make removal of pit easier) and then remove pits: Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 3

Skin beets and grate them on big slots to the salad bowl: Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 4

Add them to the salad bowl: Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 7

If you have whole walnuts, cut them with knife, not very finely; how much of walnuts to use depend on you taste, I ended up using about 3 table spoons not finely chopped walnuts: Beet Salad with Prunes and Walnuts Recipe: Step 8

I had this salad at my Ukrainian friend’s home, and absolutely loved it. I have a similar post about this salad, but do not use onions, and use mayo with sour cream combination. The prunes add such an interesting flavor to the red beets. Here is my link, if you like to check out my version:

This is one of my favorite salads! I make it with garlic, not onions, but otherwise it’s the same. I’ve brought it to potlucks and made it for various American friends and people always seem to like it, even those who do not consider themselves beet lovers.